Credit scores: Why?

Among the many surprises that smacked me in the face with growing up is credit. Apparently there is this mysterious, invisible number attached to every person once they start growing up and start using money. This number places a value on each person, like your grade at living life. It follows you no matter where you go until the day you die. It tells everyone you want to buy stuff from if you get an A grade at living life or a B or a C, D or if you Fail at life. If your life grade is not good, you basically can't do anything ever in life until you get that grade up. The tricky thing is, no one really knows what makes your grade go up or down and no one really knows how to find out what their grade is. And then if you ever do find out how to check this grade, this is bad and you are punished by getting an even lower grade. And even if someone steals your identity and runs a muck on your credit and leaves you with a D grade, too bad. Go ahead, call the IRS, call the banks and try to explain. It doesn't matter. You are stuck with that social security number, that identity and that horrible grade until the day you die, unless you can figure out what things you need to do to raise your grade. As far as I can tell, this entails buying more stuff and taking out more loans that you can't afford in order to show that you can pay for them. Which you can't. Which is what got you into this mess in the first place. You may be thinking, Well I just wont buy anymore stuff then and wait it out. Wrong! If you don't buy stuff you can't afford then you have "no credit history" and you fail at life again. I would like to clarify that my credit is not bad. I think I get a B- at life. Of course this is a guess because heaven forbid I find out what it really is. But whoever came up with this twisted system gets an F from me. I understand that banks need to know that the person they are loaning money to is going to actually pay them back. And I probably wouldn't be so against this system if it was more transparent. Why can't we have a little credit score ap on our phones that dings every time you do something that lowers or raises your credit score. You could even ask it what to do to raise credit or prevent it from lowering. And you could constantly at any time, know exactly what your credit score is, for FREE. No more of these sign up and pay monthly to know your own personal information and if you don't pay it your credit score drops. If credit is really so important to being able to buy or do anything in life then it should be like checking your bank account. Easy. Free. Your right to know it. Yeah, that's what I think.

Potty Emergency!

Have you ever had something extraordinary happen to you that you want to tell people but you know it's not appropriate? Well todays entry is about just such an event. You see, in my years of watching girlfriend after girlfriend get married I've noticed something. They ALL get sick in their first few weeks of marriage. I've heard about the infamous UTI that plagues many new brides and I was determined that would not be me. So about a week before the wedding I started taking 10,400 mg of cranberry concentrate supplements a day. And regardless of all my other precautions after the wedding I too became a victim of the UTI. Now I've taken care of many patients with UTI's and I know all the textbook answers. But let me just say that "frequent urge to urinate" and "burning sensation upon urination" are the biggest understatements I've ever heard. A better description would be "constant sensation that your bladder is going to rupture at any moment if you don't get to a bathroom NOW" and "a sensation that you have had a blazen torch shoved up your ladiness with backwards hooks on it with the sensation that you are trying to pull said hooked torch ouch during urination". THAT'S the description they need to put in textbooks. The thing is, even though you feel as if your bladder is a full to the max water balloon, bouncing precariously with each movement, once you do actually face up to the painful experience of going to the potty you're lucky to get three drops; three painful, hooked-torch-ripping drops. Then 5 minutes later you start the whole process over again. I was miserable and tired but I couldn't even think of sleeping with a torch up my... er... self.

So my husband told me he knew of a few things that would help. At 10:00 at night we got in the car to try to find a special store with special cranberry stuff. I was hesitant to lock myself in a car, without a bathroom near by, with a hooked torch water balloon bladder, not to mention that gallons of water I'd been drinking to try to clean out my system. But not wanting to be a whiner I just decided to tough it out. I thought, If I can't handle a little bacteria in my urethra how will I ever handle childbirth? A whole baby is a lot bigger than bacteria! So I just got in the car. I always suspected that woman voice on my GPS had it in for me but now I know it. She dragged us way out into the country in the middle of the worst storm I've ever seen. JC was literally dodging tree branches and giant tumbleweeds and debris as the raging wind tried to push us off the road. Large sparks lit up the distant sky as power lines were blown to smithereens. All the lights in all the street lights and houses and business were plunged into darkness. By this time JC had given up on trying to find the store and was searching for any gas station, bar or anything with a toilet. I'm nearly in tears I have to pee so badly.

Finally I spot a gas station that is still lit up and open. "THERE!" I yelled! And JC swerved across two lanes and parked in front of the gas station door. Now getting myself up and hobbling through the convenience store without exploding my bladder or wetting my pants was a feat I was proud of. I was ready to bulldoze my way through anyone and anything that tried to stand between me and that bathroom. And I just knew something would try. Not to my surprise I found a shelf of food pushed in front of the bathroom doors. As I tried to push it aside the store worker said from across the room, "Sorry they are closed." I said, "Are they closed because they aren't working or because you were told not to let anyone use them?" He mumbled out, "I'm not supposed to let anyone use..." "Okay then I'm sorry but I've got to use them. I'll get in trouble for you." "I'm sorry but you just can't go in there." And I continued trying to push the shelf aside thinking in my head, dude have you ever had a UTI? "Hey you can't do that!" he yelled and started toward me. "Mam! Get out of the store!" I hurried a squeezed through the shelf and ran toward the first bathroom I saw, which was the men's, and locked the door before he could get to me. I've had lots of experience running to the bathroom and locking the door while being chased as a kid. I heard him exhale in frustration but he couldn't do anything about it now and I was left to sweet/painful release. As I was leaving the store he wouldn't look up at me. I just said, "Thank you. Sorry. Goodbye." and joined my husband as we continued our quest for pure cranberry.

After checking four different stores (of whose facilities I surely utilized) we found the stuff he was looking for. Pure cranberry juice and A-zo. The most potent stuff for cleaning out your system known to man. I guess druggies drink this stuff when they have to pass a drug test the next day. JC had me drink nearly the whole bottle of that nasty stuff and to my surprise, I slept like a baby all night. Today the pain is pretty much gone and I feel much better. Usually these things take days to get over and I was afraid I'd have to go on antibiotics.

This experience has given me SO MUCH more empathy for those patients of mine who get UTI after UTI and almost constantly live with the pain. I honestly don't know how they keep their sanity.